


Stuck

by chelseagirl



Category: Wonderfalls
Genre: F/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-04
Updated: 2017-09-04
Packaged: 2018-12-23 23:01:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,110
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11999754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chelseagirl/pseuds/chelseagirl
Summary: Dating your best friend's brother could get a little complicated.  Mahandra was afraid of finding herself . . . stuck.Written for Small Fandom Fest on LiveJournal in 2007, to the prompt, "You know you want it."





	Stuck

Mahandra rolled over, and was startled, once again, at the pale form of Aaron Tyler lying next to her.

Will I ever get used to this? she wondered. Dating her best friend’s brother, a guy she could remember kidnapping her Barbie and returning it, headless, with a ransom note, was something she could imagine never coming to terms with, but now that Jaye knew, and their parents knew, the big question was, would she be the last one to get used to the idea?

He stirred in his sleep. Maybe when we’ve been married ten years and have three kids. Although she wasn’t so sure this was going that way.

That was the question, really. If you date your best friend’s brother, and you’ve known him all your life, did that mean it had to be serious? How casual can it be when you already know his parents? When you might have to make your best friend pick a side?

I might just be stuck with him, she thought, fondly. He turned suddenly in his sleep, and she was reminded that he definitely was a hottie. Maybe she’d noticed that, even in high school.

One thing Aaron didn’t know was that he had very nearly been her prom date, senior year. Her boyfriend of six months, Rob, had surprised her by asking Maria Castillo, after she’d already bought the dress and put the shoes on layaway. She was almost more angry at Maria for saying yes – it wasn’t like Mahandra and Rob were a secret or anything – and violating the sacred terms of female solidarity, than she was at Rob. She’d already figured out that he was a bit of a dog, and had been planning to break up with him after prom.

Jaye, after making a pitch that, as disaffected slackers, they should really skip prom altogether, had suggested that “you could always go with Aaron. He’ll be home from college by then, and he’d do it. He likes you all right and stuff.”

“Except for the Barbie thing.”

“True. I think he still holds secret moonlight rituals with her head. But . . . for a brother he’s pretty okay, I guess. You wouldn’t be embarrassed or anything.”

Jaye, of course, was dodging three potential prom dates. Her theory was that if she never actually had to give an answer, they’d all give up and ask someone else. Two of them did, but the third caught her in a weak moment. If Jaye was going, and Mahandra had the dress already, then Mahandra was damn well going. But just before Jaye made the phone call to her brother at college, Gregg Johnson, the star quarterback, asked her. Well, she couldn’t not rub that in Rob’s and Maria’s faces, could she?

Aaron yawned and stretched. “Morning . . . Sleep okay?” He leaned over and kissed her.

“Just got a whole lot better,” she mumbled, and pulled him back down.

Kisses lead to caresses, and caresses to Aaron fumbling to pull Mahandra’s silky nightdress over her head. He stroked the soft dark skin of her arms, breasts (taking his time there . . . ), and stomach, moving ever downward, but slowly, slowly enough that she felt the growing tension.

“You know you want it,” she heard him mutter into the skin of her belly.

“I sure do,” she said.

“Huh?” said Aaron, raising his head so he could look at her.

“Want it. You said ‘you know you want it.’”

“Didn’t say anything. I was a bit occupied.” He grinned. Then, oddly, his expression changed.

As did hers. “You don’t think?”

“What Jaye has is catching?”

They both started looking around Mahandra’s bedroom, in a paranoid kind of way. She wasn’t as big on stuffed animals and kitsch as Jaye was, but she did have a china dog on the dresser that her grandma had given her when she was little, and an old teddy bear on top of a bookcase in the corner.

“You take the teddy, and I’ll take Fifi,” Mahandra said. “Keep watch.”

They sat there like that for a good twenty minutes, waiting.

“You know you want it.” This time they both heard it. It was still muffled; not Aaron speaking while pressed against Mahandra’s skin but . . .

“I don’t have any other old stuffed animals in the closet.”

Aaron started laughing, dropping his face into his hand for a moment. “I am a world-class idiot.”

“That I can believe, but why?”

He reached for his backpack, by his side of the bed. Pushing his hand in for a moment, he produced an old cow creamer, faux-Limoges and with its once-severed head SuperGlued back into place.

“You’re carrying around your parents’ cow creamer?”

“I was bringing it to Jaye’s to do an experiment later. And I kinda . . . put something in it for safekeeping.”

From the creamer, Aaron produced a silk scarf.

“Oooh, pretty.”

“It’s for you, but so is this . . .” And from the silk scarf, he produced a small black box, which he handed her with a flourish.

She opened it, to find a diamond ring – neither outrageously large, nor as small as one might have expected from a graduate student in Comparative Religion.

“Mahandra, will you marry me?”

“Hmm, now let me think.”

“You know you want it.”

They both stared at the creamer.

She held the ring in her hand, not quite slipping it on her finger. “Seriously. Bessie the cow here is right – I do want to. This is the best thing I’ve ever had going. But you’re still in school, I’m waitressing at the Barrel . . . is this really the right time?”

Aaron smiled triumphantly. “My defense date is set for two months from Monday, and I’ve got an offer to teach at the state university in Buffalo next fall. It’s like a forty minute drive, tops. I can commute from here.”

Now Mahandra looked slightly alarmed. “So I marry a kid I grew up with and stay in Niagara Falls. Forever.”

“Not forever, not if we don’t want to. Once I publish my first book, I should have a lot of options. But . . . aren’t our lives here pretty interesting?”

“You know you want it.” The creamer again.

“And getting more interesting by the minute.” Mahandra slipped the ring on her finger. “Yes, Aaron, I will . . . well, be engaged to you. Let’s hold off on the wedding plans for a bit.”

Aaron shrugged. “Whatever you want. Now, shall we get back to what we were doing?”

“You know you want it.”

“Yes, I do,” said Mahandra, and draped her new silk scarf over the cow creamer’s head. “But not with an audience.” And she pulled Aaron back down on top of her.


End file.
